1940s Abstract Paintings

Born in Ontario, Canada, Rolph Scarlett left home at age eighteen for New York City, making that city his home for long periods during his lifetime. While beginning his career as an ...

Modernist landscape oil painting by Suzanne Schweig Langsdorf Martyl (1917/18 - 2013). Oil on board. Signed. Framed. Measuring 28 by 32 inches overall and 20 by 24 painting alone.

Genre: Avant-Garde Subject: Abstract Medium: Oil Surface: Canvas Country: Mexico Dimensions: 25 3/4" x 19 3/4" x 3/4" Dimensions w/Frame: 27" x 21 1/4" THE VICTIM Yonia Fain Oil, 1947 Although this oil painting’s subject is predominantly abstract, there is a faint echo of a figural shape at its center. A figure wearing Tefillin, An organic form appears to be pinned to a hammer shaped object, reminiscent of a crucifix. This tool may be a reference to one of the Soviet Union’s symbols. Moreover, it is likely a direct reference to the persecution Fain faced as a Russian Jew in Bolshevik Russia. The contrast between colors, geometric lines, and organic curves is indicative of Fain’s collaboration with Diego Rivera, as well as the time he spent in Mexico. The primary hues communicate the hardship the artist underwent and his cathartic ability to reproduce those emotions through paint. In addition to being a renowned artist and award-winning poet, Yonia Fain is among the few survivors to triumph over the turmoil of the 20th century. Fain’s abundant body of artwork and poetry pays tribute to the hardship many experienced during the Russian Revolution, Nazi invasion of Poland, and World War II. The persecution Fain experienced forced him to immigrate to several countries including China, Mexico, and the United States. Yonia Fain was born in Russia in 1914. When he was only 10-years-old, he and his family fled from the Bolshevik Revolution to Poland. There he pursued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts and hoped to continue his education in Paris. He was awarded B.A. and M.F.A. degrees from the University of Poland. In 1939, the artist and his wife Helen moved to Warsaw when the town they lived in, Vilna, became occupied by the Soviet Union. Although they managed to escape the Nazis, Fain was apprehended by Soviet military...

Werner Drewes (1899-1985) oil on canvas, 1947 Titled: “Adobe Village” Measures: 15 ½ x 36 Frame: 21 x 42 Signed lower left and also on the verso In excellent condition. Born in Nie...

Abraham P. Hankins Piscatory, 1941 Signed and dated lower center Tempera on panel 24 x 30 inches Provenance Private Collection, New York Alexandra Avlonitis, New York (acquired from...

Julio De Diego’s Atomic Series paintings made an extraordinary statement regarding the shock and fear that accompanied the dawn of the nuclear age. In the artist’s own words, “Scientists were working secretly to develop formidable powers taken from the mysterious depths of the earth - with the power to make the earth useless! Then, the EXPLOSION! . . . we entered the Atomic Age, and from there the neo-Atomic war begins. Explosions fell everywhere and man kept on fighting, discovering he could fight without flesh.” To execute these works, De Diego developed a technique of using tempera underpainting before applying layer upon layer of pigmented oil glazes. The result is paintings with surfaces which were described as “bonelike” in quality. The forms seem to float freely, creating a three-dimensional visual effect. In the 1954 book The Modern Renaissance in American Art, author Ralph Pearson summarizes the series as “a fantastic interpretation of a weighty theme. Perhaps it is well to let fantasy and irony appear to lighten the devastating impact. By inverse action, they may in fact increase its weight.” Exhibited 1950 University of Illinois at Urbana "Contemporary American Painting" 1964 Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, Texas This work retains its original frame which measures 54" x 36" x 2". About this artist: Julio De Diego crafted a formidable persona within the artistic developments and political struggles of his time. The artist characterized his own work as “lyrical,” explaining, “through the years, the surrealists, the social-conscious painters and the others tried to adopt me, but I went my own way, good, bad or indifferent.” [1] His independence manifested early in life when de Diego left his parent’s home in Madrid, Spain, in adolescence following his father’s attempts to curtail his artistic aspirations. At the age of fifteen he held his first exhibition, set up within a gambling casino. He managed to acquire an apprenticeship in a studio producing scenery for Madrid’s operas, but moved from behind the curtains to the stage, trying his hand at acting and performing as an extra in the Ballet Russes’ Petrouchka with Nijinsky. He spent several years in the Spanish army, including a six-month stretch in the Rif War of 1920 in Northern Africa. His artistic career pushed ahead as he set off for Paris and became familiar with modernism’s forays into abstraction, surrealism, and cubism. The artist arrived in the U.S. in 1924 and settled in Chicago two years later. He established himself with a commission for the decoration of two chapels in St. Gregory’s Church. He also worked in fashion illustration, designed magazine covers and developed a popular laundry bag for the Hotel Sherman. De Diego began exhibiting through the Art Institute of Chicago in 1929, and participated in the annual Chicago Artists Exhibitions, Annual American Exhibitions, and International Water Color Exhibitions. He held a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in the summer of 1935. Though the artist’s career was advancing, his family life had deteriorated. In 1932 his first marriage dissolved, and the couple’s young daughter Kiriki was sent to live with friend Paul Hoffman. De Diego continued to develop his artistic vocabulary with a growing interest in Mexican art. He traveled throughout the country acquainting himself with the works of muralists such as Carlos Merida, and also began a collection of small native artifacts...

Vintage American school abstract expressionist oil painting by Ray Prohaska (1901 - 1981). Oil on board. Very nice period frame. Signed. Exhibited at Mortimer Levitt Gallery. Im...

Antique modernist mixed media abstract oil painting and collage by Paul René Gauguin (1911 - 1976). Oil and mixed media on board, circa . Signed. D...

Very impressive early American abstract expressionist painting. Oil on board. Framed. Signed. Housed in a wonderful period wide modernist frame.

MODERNIST ABSTRACT Mid-Century New Hope Non-Objective oil American Modern WPA Louis Stone (1902-1984) "Abstract," 16 X 12 inches. Oil on canvas, signed lower right. An abstract pai...

Vintage American modernist abstract landscape oil painting. Oil on canvas. Framed. Signed. Measuring: 14 by 21 inches overall, and 9 by 16 painting alone.. In excellent original co...

A unique oil painting on canvas signed by Paul Lambert (1910–1970), a renowned French artist celebrated for his evocative portrayals of Parisian landscapes. This rare piece exemplifi...

Ortez (Modernist Family Portrait) is a vibrant 1947 abstract gouache on paper by American artist Lewis Lee Tilley (1921–2005). This dynamic composition captures a family of five seat...

This striking 1945 abstract landscape watercolor by pioneering modernist artist Eve (Van Ek) Drewelowe, titled "The Champagne Cascades, Crescendos, Crashes," is a bold interpretation...

This original vintage painting by Charles Ragland Bunnell (1897–1968), titled Quitting Time from his Black and Blue Series (1941), exemplifies the artist’s signature Abstract Structu...

Vintage American modernist abstract landscape oil painting. Oil on board. Framed. Measuring: 20 by 24 inches overall, and 16 by 20 painting alone.. In excellent original condition. ...

Artwork measures 48" x 30" and framed 56 ¼" x 38 ¼" x 3" Provenance: John Heller Gallery, NYC, circa 1975 (label verso) The artist's daughter Corbino Galleries, Sarasota, FL (1990)...

"Backstage, Ambassador" Broadway Theatre NYC Mid-century Modern Modernist CubistSigned lower left, titled on the stretcher. Norkin was a Brooklyn, Ne...

Circa 1945 Signed lower left Sight size 12 x 10.5 in Overall size in newly matted one inch wide black frame 25.5 x 21.5 in

"Birth" is a striking semi-abstract watercolor painting created by the talented Colorado artist, Charles Ragland Bunnell, in 1943. The artwork, crafted during Bunnell's Black and Blu...

Charles Elmer Harris (Beni E. Kosh), Untitled (Central Railroad), watercolor, c. 1945. Estate stamped verso, 'Beni E Kosh COLLECTION' and numbered '697' in ink. A fine, modernist re...

This striking original 1949 gouache and wax painting, titled "Fetishes", is a powerful work by acclaimed New Mexico modernist Howard Schleeter (1903–1976). Rich with symbolic abstrac...

Abstract Work on Paper Mid-Century Modernism Greek American Gouache Drawing. A modernist artist who emigrated to America from Greece in 1904, when he was fourteen years old, Jean Xceron is described as having a reputation as an artist that has mysteriously fallen into obscurity---especially since he was reportedly quite prominent during his lifetime. However, a partial explanation of that omission is the fact that many of his papers and early records have been lost. He was a painter of biomorphic abstractions and did collages, which were influenced by Dadaism. Xceron was active in New York City when modernism was gaining influence. Of him during this period, it was written that his artistic role was "a vital link between what is commonly termed as the first-generation (the Stieglitz group, the Synchromists, etc.) and second-generation, the American Abstract Artists, the Transcendental Painting...

"Ole Swimmin Hole" Southern California Oil on canvas board 1930s Elegant mid century landscape depicting a lake and hillside in summer by well known and collected California artist ...

A radiant Impressionist-style landscape, this oil painting captures the vibrant warmth of a summer meadow scattered with white daisies and blush-pink wildflowers. Loose, expressive b...

Oil on canvasboard. Framed. Image size, 20H x 30L. Signed.

Antique French modernist Paris school cityscape street scene oil painting. Oil on canvas. Framed. Signed. Measuring 27 by 40 inches overall and 26 by 39 painting alone. In excellent...

Signed & dated 1940 lower left. Vaclav Vytlacil (1892-1984) He was born to Czechoslovakian parents in 1892 in New York City. Living in Chicago as a youth, he took classes at the S...

It's 1945. What artists were making totally abstract, non-objective paintings like this? Work characterized by organic forms and flattened picture planes, with solid bold colors dr...

Nicolas de Staël Study 1944 Original oil on canvas Unsigned On canvas 32 x 24 cm (c. 13 x 10 in) Presented in in a wood frame 41 x 34 cm (c. 16 x 13 in) Annotated "Nicolas de Stael ...

Signed lower right, 'Buk' for Eduard Buk Ulreich (American, 1889-1966), dedicated lower right, 'Made for Ruth M.' and painted circa 1945. Titled verso 'Birds in Flight', additionally...

The fame, notoriety, and monetary value of an artist's work in today's market are not based on one's talent and vision. Factors such as marketing and media momentum play a defining r...

Belgian artist Miette Braive(1916-2000), was classically trained in Belgium, before moving to Paris to pursue her art career as first a student and then a contemporary of the famed F...

Signed lower right Agnes Hart was born in Meridan, Connecticut. She studied at the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida; at Iowa State University with Josef Presser, Paul Burlin and Lucile...

Rolph Scarlett (Canadian/American, 1889 - 1984) “Abstract” Signed and dated 1947, lower right Gouache on paper Provenance: Private collection, Miami Florida About Rolph Scarlett w...

This strikingly etherial Mid-Century Modernist Vera Idelson 'Composition Biomorphique' Tempera on masonite Painting originates from Israel, created in 1946. A unique and gorgeous pi...

Antique American modernist abstract expressionist painting. Oil on board, circa 1940. Image size, 24L x 20H.

Oskar Fishinger (1900-1967), began his career in Germany as one of the pioneers of the Germans avant garde abstract film movement, known for inventing abstract musical animations, and what was often reffered to as, Optical Poetry. He arrived in Hollywood in 1936 where he worked in film until 1947, before turning his attention exclusively to his abstract painting. Time Travel #2, one of a pair of two Fishinger paintings...

Antique American modernist abstract painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1940. Housed in a vintage frame. Image size, 18L x 24H.

Painted by Robert Gilberg (American, 1911-1970) circa 1950. Unsigned and accompanied by a certificate of authenticity. Born in Oakland, Robert George Gilberg first studied at the O...

Signed Lower Right Bror Julius Olsson “B.J.O.” Nordfeldt (1878 - 1955) Bror Julius Olsson was born in Tullstrop, Sweden in 1878. He immigrated to the United States in 1891, later adopting his mother’s maiden name of Nordfeldt. Beginning his art studies at the Art Institute of Chicago where he was chosen to assist fellow artist, Albert Herter, with a large mural project for the McCormick Harvester Company. In 1900, he was sent to Paris by McCormick to help set up the completed mural at the Paris Exposition. While there, he studied briefly at the Academie Julian before traveling to England to study woodblock printmaking under F. Morley Fletcher. Returning to Chicago in 1903, Nordfeldt would spend the next ten years painting mainly figurative works in an academic style similar to that of the Old Masters. By the mid-teens he had developed a bold dramatic modernist style and divided his time between New York and Provincetown, Massachusetts. There, he invented the “Provincetown Print...

Antique American female modernist still life oil painting. Oil on board. Framed. Signed. In excellent original condition. Handsomely framed in a wood molding. Excellent conditio...

Antique English landscape oil painting by Julian Barrow (1939 - 2013). Oil on canvas. Signed. Framed. Measuring: 10 by 12 inches overall, and 8 by 10 painting alone. In excellent or...

Signed, titled and dated cubist oil on canvas by French painter Andre Masson. The work depicts colourful insects. Signature: Signed lower right and titled and dated 1946 verso Dim...

Work on wood

Signed Lower Right Vaclav Vytlacil (1892-1984) He was born to Czechoslovakian parents in 1892 in New York City. Living in Chicago as a youth, he took classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, returning to New York when he was 20. From 1913 to 1916, he enjoyed a scholarship from the Art Students League, and worked with John C. Johansen (a portraitist whose expressive style resembled that of John Singer Sargent), and Anders Zorn. He accepted a teaching position at the Minneapolis School of Art in 1916, remaining there until 1921. This enabled him to travel to Europe to study Cézanne’s paintings and works of the Old Masters. He traveled to Paris, Prague, Dresden, Berlin, and Munich seeking the works of Titian, Cranach, Rembrandt, Veronese, and Holbein, which gave him new perspective. Vytlacil studied at the Royal Academy of Art in Munich, settling there in 1921. Fellow students were Ernest Thurn and Worth Ryder, who introduced him to famous abstractionist Hans Hofmann. He worked with Hofmann from about 1922 to 1926, as a student and teaching assistant. During the summer of 1928, after returning to the United States, Vytlacil gave lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, on modern European art. Soon thereafter, he became a member of the Art Students League faculty. After one year, he returned to Europe and successfully persuaded Hofmann to teach at the League as well. He spent about six years in Europe, studying the works of Matisse, Picasso, and Dufy. In 1935, he returned to New York and became a co-founder of the American Abstract Artists group in 1936. He later had teaching posts at Queens College in New York; the College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, California; Black Mountain College in North Carolina; and the Art Students League. His paintings exhibit a clear inclination toward modernism. His still lives and interiors from the 1920s indicate an understanding of the art of Cézanne. In the 1930s, his works displayed two very different kinds of art at the same time. His cityscapes and landscapes combine Cubist-inspired spatial concerns with an expressionistic approach to line and color. Vytlacil also used old wood, metal, cork, and string in constructions, influenced by his friend and former student, Rupert Turnbull. He eventually ceased creating constructions as he considered them too limiting. The spatial challenges of painting were still his preference. During the 1940s and 1950s, his works indicated a sense of spontaneity not felt in his earlier work. He married Elizabeth Foster in Florence, Italy, in 1927 and they lived and worked in Positano, Italy for extended periods of time. Later on, they divided their time between homes in Sparkill, New York and Chilmark, Massachusetts, where Vyt, as he was affectionately called, taught at the Martha's Vineyard Art...

Genre: Avant-Garde Subject: Abstract Mexican Landscape Medium: Oil Surface: Canvas Country: Mexico Dimensions: Yonia Fain Oil, 1947 Although this oil painting’s subject is predom...

Vintage American modernist landscape oil painting. Oil on canvas. Signed. Framed. Measuring: 27 by 30 inches overall, and 20 by 24 painting alone.. In excellent original condition. ...

Antique American modernist landscape painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1930. Signed. Housed in period frame. Image size 45L x 32H.

Just discovered, a rare, surrealist painting by American artist Robert McIntosh(1916-2010) McIntosh was extremely prolific and exhibited thro...

This vibrant oil painting by Henry Varnum Poor (American, 1888–1970) captures a blooming spring landscape with barns, budding trees, and bright skies rendered in expressive, textural...

Antique American modernist abstract oil painting by Lela "Jackie" Axline (1910-1998). Oil on board, circa 1940. Signed. Displayed in a period modern frame. Image, 16"L x 24"H.

This work is part of our exhibition - America Coast to Coast: Artists of the 1940s Untitled (Cubist Portrait), 1945, oil on masonite, signed and dated lower middle, 20 x 16 inches, remnant of exhibition label verso, perhaps exhibited at Murry's solo exhibition at the Los Angeles's Screen Cartoonists' Gallery, July , 1945, presented in its original frame Jerre Murry was a California modernist painter. Born in Columbia, Missouri, Murry studied at the Detroit Academy of Art and worked as an artist for the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press. Murry traveled to the Bahamas, where he was inspired to paint modernist scenes of island life and people. By the early 1930s, Murry had relocated to Los Angeles, where he caught the attention of Synchromist painter Stanton Macdonald Wright, State Supervisor for the Federal Art Project (FAP) in Southern California. MacDonald Wright enrolled Murry into the FAP. Murry’s Gauguin-influenced painting Sun Image was exhibited together with other FAP artists at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1936, and Murry was also included in the FAP exhibit at the Paris Exposition in 1937. Stendahl Galleries in Los Angeles, the Chamber of Commerce Gallery in Santa Barbara, and at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art also showed Murry’s work during the 1930s. Murry created a murals for Los Angeles Water & Power Company, the Boise, Idaho Post Office, and Glendale Junior College. In 1939, Murry's work was exhibited at the Golden Gate International Exposition and the New York World's Fair. He also was included in the All California Exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of art that same year. He went on to exhibit in Los Angeles at the Foundation of Western Art's Trends in Southern California Art shows in 1940 and 1941, at Raymond and Raymond Gallery in Hollywood and USC’s Elizabeth Holmes...

Very impressive and a rare early work by Frederick E. Conway (1900 - 1973). Oil on board. Incredibly framed. Signed.

Impressive early American modernist abstract still life oil painting. Framed. Oil on canvas board. Signed. Image size, 24H by 18L.

Arthur Dove: 1880-1946. One of the most important early American Modernists and Abstract Expressionists. He has had auction results over $8,000,000 and that record was 2 weeks ago. A...

Oil on canvas

Antique American modernist flower still life painting. Oil on canvas. Signed. In excellent original condition. Handsomely framed in a period silver leaf molding. Excellent condi...

Richard Andres (American, 1927-2013) Untitled, c. 1949 oil on canvas 18 x 32 inches Richard Andres was born in Buffalo, New York in 1927. A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art in 1950, he was immediately drafted and served for two years in the army as a mural painter. He received his Master of Arts from Kent State in 1961. A frequent exhibitor at galleries and museums and winner of multiple May Show prizes, Andres taught art in the Cleveland Public Schools for 28 years, as well as teaching the University of Buffalo, the Cleveland Institute of Art and the Western Reserve University. Very little in Richard Andres’ childhood would have predicted his love of classical music, mid-century-modern architecture and certainly not his lifelong passion for art and in particular abstract art. Richard’s father, Raymond, had no more than a third-grade education, and his mother, Clara, was one of thirteen children – only three of whom lived into adulthood and none of whom attended high school. They lived, when Richard was a boy, in a dingy area of Buffalo, NY in a walk-up apartment situated above a tavern. Raymond and Clara supplemented the income from their factory jobs in the bar downstairs with Raymond playing ragtime on the piano and Clara serving drinks. This often left Richard and his two older brothers at home alone to fend for themselves. The two older boys, Raymond and Russell, were - unlike Richard- rather rough and tumble and entertained themselves with stickball, boxing and the like. Richard, on the other hand, from a very young age liked to draw, or better yet even, to paint with the small set of watercolors he received for Christmas one year. Paper, however, at the height of the depression, was hard to come by. Luckily, Clara used paper doilies as decoration for the apartment and Richard would contentedly paint and then cut up doilies, gluing the pieces together to create collages. At eight-years-old, he discovered the Albright-Knox Museum (then known as the Albright Art Gallery) and spent several hours a week there studying the paintings. He was particularly fond of Charles Burchfield‘s landscapes, enamored with their ‘messiness’ and thinking that they somehow captured more ‘feeling’ than works he was previously familiar with. For his tenth Christmas, he asked for and received a ‘how-to’ paint book by Elliot O’Hare. Through this self-teaching, he assembled the portfolio needed for acceptance to Buffalo Technical High School where he studied Advertising Arts. In his Junior year, he was encouraged to enter a watercolor painting, “Two Barns,” in the national 1944-45 Ingersoll Art Award Contest and was one of twelve grand prize winners – each one winning one hundred dollars. More importantly the painting was exhibited at the Carnegie Institute Galleries, which resulted in his winning a national scholarship to the Cleveland School of Art (The Cleveland Art Institute). He flourished at the art school under the tutelage of faculty members such as Carl Gaertner, as well as that of visiting artists such as William Sommer and Henry George Keller. He would say in later years that Gaertner, in particular, influenced his attitude toward life as well as art. “Gaertner,” Andres said, “believed that there was no need to be a ‘tortured artist’, that an artist should rather enjoy beauty, family, and life in general.” Free to spend his days as he chose, he wandered the Cleveland Art Museum for most of the hours he was not attending classes or painting; the remaining time was spent drinking coffee at a local hangout with art school friends – which is where he met fellow Henry Keller scholarship winner, Avis Johnson. Richard was immediately smitten with Avis, but being rather shy, it took him the entire summer of 1948 to build up his courage to ask her out. Over that summer he ‘thought about Avis’ and worked in a diner to save money. He also used the hundred-dollar prize money won in High School to visit the first Max Beckmann retrospective in the United States at the City Art Museum in St. Louis. Over a half century later he spoke of that exhibit with a reverence usually reserved for spiritual matters, “I walked in and it was like nothing I had ever seen before... the color...It just glowed.” Returning to campus in the Fall, the first thing he did was go to the coffee shop in hopes of finding Avis. He did, and she, upon seeing him, realized that she was also smitten with him. They quickly became known as ‘the couple’ on campus, and a year later, with Richard being drafted for the Korean war, they were quickly married by a Justice of the Peace, celebrating after with family at Avis’s Cleveland home. As a gift, faculty member John Paul Miller designed and made the simple gold wedding ring Avis wore for their 65 years of marriage. During those 65 years neither wavered in their mutual love, nor in the respect they shared for one another’s art. The couple lived in a converted chicken coop in Missouri while Richard was in boot camp. At the camp, he would volunteer for any job offered and one of those jobs ended up being painting road signs. His commander noticed how quickly and neatly he worked and gave him more painting work to do - eventually recommending him for a position painting murals for Army offices in Panama. Until her dying day, Avis remained angry that “The army got to keep those fabulous murals and they probably didn’t even know how wonderful they were.” In Panama, their first son, Mark, was born. After Richard’s discharge in 1953, they moved back to the Cleveland area and used the GI bill to attend Kent State gaining his BA in education. The small family then moved briefly to Buffalo, where Richard taught at the Albright Art School and the University of Buffalo – and their second son, Peter, was born. Richard had exhibited work in the Cleveland May Show and the Butler Art Museum during his art school years, and during the years in Buffalo, his work was exhibited at the gallery he had so loved as a child, the Albright Art Gallery. In 1956, the family moved back to the Cleveland area and Richard began teaching art at Lincoln West High School during the day while working toward his MA in art at Kent State in the evenings. Avis and Richard, with the help of an architect, designed their first home - a saltbox style house in Hudson, Ohio, and in 1958, their third son, Max (after Max Beckmann) was born. Richard enjoyed the consistency of teaching high school as well as the time it gave him to paint on the weekends and during the summer months. In 1961, he received his MA and his daughter, Claire, was born. With a fourth child, the house was much too small, and Avis and Richard began designing their second home. An admirer of MCM architecture, Richard’s favorite example of the style was the Farnsworth house – he often spoke of how the concepts behind this architectural style, particularly that of Mies van der Rohe, influenced his painting. Andres described himself as a 1950’s...

Vintage modernist abstract hat shop painting. Oil on canvas, circa 1950. Housed in a period frame. Image size, 32L x 26H.